Juniper Networks announced today their EX line of Switches. You can see more about the switches and a demo at www.juniper.net/ This new line of switches runs their JunOS operating system, rather than some other OS that would create confusion and complication. I have spoken to the local Juniper team and it seems as though Juniper built the switches themselves rather than through OEM or acquisition. I’m not sure I agree with that from a product maturity or time to market aspect. In any case, congrats to Juniper for filling what many believe was a hole in their product offering.
I am curious as to what this will do for their NAC strategy, if anything.
–Chris
January 29th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Yes, a hole in their product line. And yes, another way to try and take market share away from Cisco. But can they do it successfully? Especially with a product that has admittedly immature (i.e. newly developed and homegrown) technology. I also wonder why Juniper, which OEMs at least so many pieces of its security line, would opt to go this route in an already commoditized market.
Would be interested in your thoughts.
January 29th, 2008 at 10:38 am
@Jennifer,
Their decision to, apparently, build these switches themselves is the one aspect that makes the least amount of sense to me. As stated these switches are effectively a 1.0 product in a very crowded market. I can’t help but think that their time to market would have been reduced if they had done something like acquire Enterasys. At lest then their switches would have a history and referenceable accounts.
Thanks for the comment!
January 29th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Chris,
Juniper rolled there own so that it would run JunOS. If they would have bought Extreme (which was considered) they would have had to migrate the code to JunOS. Yes it expanded time to market, but it gave them a huge advantage over Cisco, you run the same code and revision level on the switch and router. They have also integrated it with there security management center, NSM, so you can manage the switch from there. The cool part is, you can also use there application profiler on NSM with the switches. As for the NAC strategy, it will be an “enforcement” point just like the firewalls currently our. They definitely have a strong portfolio offering now. Just to be open, I do work for a reseller, we sell Juniper, Cisco, Extreme, Foundry.